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An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has quietly launched a new on-screen guide for its cable boxes. What they're not advertising is that they've removed the ability to schedule VCR-compatible channel flipping any time more than a few hours in advance for people who don't buy the $20/month DVR service. What this means is that VCR owners are now forced to pay for Comcast's $20/month DVR service or else start their recordings manually. For us techies there might be a way around this, but ordinary VCR enthusiasts and owners of other recorders are left in the dust. Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?" Raise your hand if you regularly use a VCR these days, too.

You've been unfairly marked troll. (Not that I agree with you, but everyone should have a right to express an opinion without having their karma stabbed.)

Anyway, a free market WOULD fix in this case, because when Comcast pulls this shit, you would then be able to switch to Cox cable or Time-Warner cable or AppleTV or Verizon TV or anybody else you desired. Comcast's poor decisions would drive it into bankruptcy as customers would flee in droves. (As happened to Circuit City not too long ago.) BUT because Comcast operates a virtual monopoly, they know they can force customers into upgrading to Comcast DVRs, simply by turning off standard features...... like a VCR Timer.

Also it's not just VCRs, but also DVRs this affects.

I have a Panasonic ReplayTV that can switch the old analog channels just fine, but ever since the analog-to-digital transition, it's lost that capability. I now rely on an external box with a "VCR/DVR Timer" to switch the digital stations. If Comcast removes that capability from their set-top box, than DVRs like mine will no longer be able to record anything but a single channel when I'm away from home.

IMHO.

Please don't mod me "troll" just cause you disagree (like you did to Lekh).

It's worse than that, though. Not only does Comcast have a functional monopoly(or at least cozy duopoly) in a large number of its service areas, infrastructure construction is fundamentally subject to economic phenomena that encourage monopoly formation.

Building infrastructure has very high barriers to entry and substantially greater build-out costs than operating costs. This means that any prospective entrant needs deep pockets just to lay the wires, and also means that the incumbent, who has already had time to amortize build-out costs, can generally threaten to undercut possible entrants quite deeply for a period of time.

Once you add on the not-strictly-economic-but-hard-to-eradicate-in-the-real-world issues of easements and things(since building most kinds of infrastructure more or less necessarily requires trampling all over other people's property, building towers, putting up poles, or digging ditches, you either have the truly epic barrier to entry of having to negotiate individually with all propertyholders, or the local state-entity uses its power to take and bundle compulsory rights-of-way, which substantially lowers barriers to entry; but makes control over all rights of way a political football at the state or municipal level, which generally comes down to a further advantage to the incumbent).

Frankly, I suspect that we would have a much freer market if building out fiber were generally treated as a state function, as roads and water lines are. The municipality would run the fiber from you to a peering point. By default, the fiber would just sit there, possibly offer access to some municipal web sites. If you chose, you could contract with any private party operating at that peering point(which would make room available on a RAND basis) and a simple router config change would allow traffic between your fiber and one or more of the parties at the peering point. You want internet access? Talk to any of the ISPs at your peering point. TV? Any IPTV provider, whether at that peering point, or through an ISP, can sell you that. Phone? VOIP through your ISP, or a dedicated provider if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

All the municipality would have to do is keep the fiber lit, and pass traffic through it. Competition at the peering point could be nice and stiff(since laying fat pipes to a single location, properly chosen, is way cheaper than laying thin pipes to hundreds of locations, and because various service providers could lease bulk bandwidth from each other to offer services). As with rule of law and other flavors of infrastructure, the actual line-to-premises is arguably one of those places where state intervention is the foundation of a good free market, not the opposite of one.

'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough

If you'll permit me to interupt your trolling for just a moment, I'd like to point out that cable companies are not monopolies. You DO have a choice. It's called satellite, and it's similarly priced. Things like DirecTV are available in places where even cable is not. Cable is just a medium for delivering the service. The service is enhanced television.

So if Comcast does something you think is unworthy of your dollars, take your dollars elsewhere.

I'm not a Libertarian, but I'm sympathetic to some of their ideas, and they're generally correct in stating that markets tend to be better off without overbearing regulation. You're always going to have regulation of some kind. A sales tax can be viewed as a form of regulation. But what Libertarians are justified in fearing are people like you telling the government "make this company give me everything I want at the price I specifiy!".

Why would anyone want to run a business in that kind of environment? And more to the point, when did you gain a right to Comcast's products and services, let alone the right to tell them HOW to offer those services? What else will you demand the government make them do, and for how much? Can you please point out to me where in the law you have a right to Cable TV? Cable/Satellite is a luxury. It's non-essential. It's not like a hospital where they HAVE to serve you.

If you think they suck, fine. You've probably even got some legitimate points. But it's a private business. If you don't like them, do business elsewhere. Or don't do it all.

The FCC has ruled that condo/homeowner associations cannot restrict the installation of (small) satellite dishes or antennas for receiving television or Internet services. There are certain exemptions for historical preservation and such but other than that they must make reasonable accommodations.
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html [fcc.gov]

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way. I have only one answer: we care a HELL of a lot more about immediate convenience and instant gratification than we have ever cared about being consistent with our principles. So we'll buy from abusive companies that deliver poor service before we'll do without their products/services. We'll patronize a company that is known to engage in extremely dishonorable business practices so long as their products are 5% cheaper than the competitors'.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

For free markets to have any chance to make the world a better place, i.e. to give people good stuff as cheaply as possible, consumers as a group must be informed. They're not, by and large. Consumers in general consume what the constant barrage of propaganda tells them to consume.

Money is power: Power to form monopolies, power to persuade, power to shape ideas and world views.

Sounds good on paper, doesn't it? Imagine a group of people putting up honest and detailed information about the products of big companies. Now imagine what they'll spend on lawyers when the big companies in question find out about it. Even if they can prove they tell the truth, they're going bankrupt.

How would you argue the free-market approach to cable television should work? Should cities let anyone dig up the road whenever they want, even if 10 companies are doing it constantly? Should they let nobody dig up the roads, and force cable companies to piece together rights of way by individually negotiating with private landowners, even though it's nearly impossible to actually piece together rights of way in that manner? Should they pick some arbitrary number, like top 3 bidders get to dig up roads? Should the city bury its own lines and sell access to multiple ISPs? I'm not quite sure what the most free-market approach is for something like that, which has physical constraints on getting to the market.

A much better idea would be to have the city lay out it's grid (cable, internet, telephone, etc) and then lease its usage to competing companies, The infrastructure becomes an investment that the community has, and is able to profit from. All potential lessees would be charged the same amount for usage of components of the grid, thus you have the same base rate for each company, then they each have to figure in the profit margin etc... no need to explain this any further.

I realize this is a corruptible system, at the same time, it would be a self correcting system, as the community can decide which is offering the best service for the price.

There would be a large "up front" Investment here, but would pay for it self, especially when you get a large number of companies on the same grid.

cable television and power distribution are natural monopolies. Regulated or not, there is no possibility for a free market there.

Pharma companies are regulated because we found out that if we didn't regulate food and drugs, snake oil salesmen would wander the country selling unlabeled tincture of morphine to cure your upset stomach.

Insurance... well that's a clusterfuck. Insurance is interesting because it is largely regulated at the state level, so, in theory, it should be possible for one state (Texas

Cable TV *used* to be a natural monopoly, when it was all analog. Now, it's all just data.

You only need one fiber to each house (owned by the city, an independent non-profit, or even neighborhood associations - anyone but the content/service providers). You could easily have 10 each of cable TV companies, phone companies and internet companies all available over the same bit of fiber.

Strong regulation? You're on crack. It's deregulation that allows for this sort of BS. In othercountries, companies that have "ownership" of physical rights of way have to share that withcompetitors. This is why they have Gigabit ethernet when much of the US is lucky to get 2 mbit.

Infact, the wannabe robber barons are whining about how gross under-regulation infact constitutescrushing over-regulation when it is obviously not the case.

Hmmm. You make sense - but, can you give an example of free market in the United States, any time within the past 100 years or so?

Seriously, we have never seen it in our lifetimes. Every single commodity or good that you can possibly purchase has been regulated at multiple points. Nothing you can possibly buy today is actually produced by a "free market". Absolutely nothing.

If you can find something that isn't actually regulated directly, you will find that it is affected by peripheral regulations, such as minimum wage laws. In the case of textiles, cotton remains King. Imagine that. I can't think of any specific laws that regulate cotton - but cotton is protected by seemingly unrelated regulations that outlaw hemp products in this country. You might say "Big deal!" But, hemp products outlast similar cotton products, usually by 7 times. Hemp products actually make the soil they are grown from more fertile, as opposed to cotton, which depletes the nutrients in the soil rapidly.

Go ahead - look around, and find ANYTHING on the US market which is truly subject to "free trade".

We can't possibly prove or disprove the idea that the free market is self regulating, because we've never put it to the test.

We haven't put it to the test in the last 100 years or so, because we learned the lesson the first time. The industrial revolution in Britain and the United States was a free-market wet-dream. No minimum wage, no worker safety, no anti-competitive status, and no child labor laws.

What happened was that industry found the sweet spot where they were just a hair better than staying on the farm (which also had none of those restrictions) so that they could run their machinery with a constant stream of new-arrivals. The result was sweat shops, child labor, company towns, tenements, slums, the reduction of the middle class (skilled workers), and massive environmental damage - all for the benefit for a few ultra-wealthy "captains of industry" like Rockefeller, Carnagie, Morgan, and Vanderbilt.

Ironically, communist China is in the process of repeating our free-market mistake.

It may have been that the conditions during the industrial revolution were inevitable, and it is certainly true that conditions during the industrial revolution made it possible for the eventual largest expansion of both the economy and the middle class in history.

My issue is with that the post I replied to asserted that we didn't know if industries would regulate themselves because we haven't tried in 100 years. This is technically true, the last time we tried was about 120 years ago. That time we discov

Galbraith’s magnum opus was The New Industrial State, in which he argued that large firms dominate the American economy. “The mature corporation,” he wrote, “had readily at hand the means for controlling the prices at which it sells as well as those at which it buys. . . . Since General Motors produces some half of all the automobiles, its designs do not reflect the current mode, but are the current mode. The proper shape of an automobile, for most people, will be what the automobile makers decree the current shape to be.”

Well, not quite. Although GM would have loved to “decree” the shape of automobiles in the 1980s, it seems consumers had different ideas. That is one reason why GM, which did produce about half of all U.S.-bought autos in the 1960s, sells only a quarter of all U.S.-bought autos today.

Interestingly, in his autobiography Galbraith presented the very evidence that should have talked him out of his conclusion in The New Industrial State. In 1954 Galbraith was on a consulting team hired by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canada ’s dominant railway at the time. He saw quickly that CPR’s most promising assets were its forests and land, not its railway. Yet CPR basically ignored the team’s advice. He wrote, “The railway men did not look with favor on such passing fads as airplanes.” This should have clued him in to the idea that large firms like CPR could “decree” virtually nothing.

To his credit, Galbraith ultimately admitted, with a 15-year lag, the major problem with his thesis. In July 1982 the steel and auto companies he had claimed were immune from competition and recessions were laying off workers in response to both foreign competition and recession. Asked on “Meet the Press” whether he had underestimated the extent of risk that even large corporations face, Galbraith paused and replied, “Yeah, I think I did.”

Wal-Mart keeps unions at bay; keeps a horribly aggressive competition base that keeps other retailers in line (this breaks price fixing); and actually supplies decent salary and benefits to its workers (in 2005 they gave inventory employees $10/hr and decent medical; Best Buy was paying $6.5-$8 in 2008).

Wal-Mart deals with different suppliers than i.e. Sears. They encourage outsourcing of labor to reduce manufacture costs; but they don't carry Land's End, Polo, or Doc Marten. So they have lower quality clothes, at like $20 for a set of pants or a shirt; whereas i.e Land's End sells a much higher quality set of pants for $40, but you can get them at Sears or discount clothing stores for $30 regularly.

Those of us who buy decent clothes will recognize the quality and pay $30, maybe even $40 for good pants; but I'm not paying $80 for those things. If Wal-Mart wasn't around though... $30 cheap jeans or khakis, and Old Navy selling their stuff for $50-$60 probably? Those $2-$3 glasses... yeah, instead of getting a good set of kitchenware for $50, it might cost you $100. You can get a cheap set from Wal-Mart for about $35.

The poor would suffer most at the demise of Wal-Mart; though the middle class would be notched down a bit since nobody would be aggressively fighting for lower prices. It's hard to compete with a different tier product when you're 1 class above the lower end crap yet your price range is 3 times higher.

His point is valid nonetheless. $8.50 working 40 hours a week is only $1156 after tax per month, and before any deductions for retirement and savings plans.

WalMart touts itself as a perfectly kosher place to work if you're an adult that needs to live off the money, but that couldn't be further from the truth. A disproportionate number of WalMart employees rely on some sort of public social assistance program, whether that be food stamps, daycare assistance or insurance subsidies. WalMart uses razor thin mar

$1200/month after tax when you have 2 room mates in a $1000/month apartment in college is like, $900/mo for YOUR food and car insurance. Plus you have medical benefits. With 2 working people in a $1000/mo apartment, that's $2400/mo combined, leaving $1400/mo to cover expenses.

I work with a fellow who supported another non-working person in their own apartment covering all expenses in a $23,000/year job. That's scarcely $1500 after taxes, covering two people.

If we quit buying everything but food, energy, and our clothing, watch how fast every other economy on the planet would suffer.... Consumers ARE all-powerful, no matter how corporations try to spin it.

... and the world's insects have the power to join together and destroy humanity, but it's not going to happen. Hypothetical power and real power are two different things. As long as a company can control enough consumers, then the others can vote with their wallet all they want-- it won't do much. That's the problem with a lot of arguments for free market. They assume that large groups of consumers will act with the same cohesion as their corporate counterparts. This rarely holds true.

It's actually worse than that. Most Federal regulatory bodies are, in fact, controlled by large corporations, and are used not to regulate corporate activity, but to impose barriers to competition for those corporations, and regulate activities such that consumers are more dependent upon those corporations and the government institutions controlled by them.

The FCC, then, is there to protect media giants from competition from pirate radio. The FDA is there to protect corporate food giants from small farm [visiontoamerica.org]

Indeed, the free market is designed to give people what they want. Unfortunately, a lot of times, people's desire runs counter to their long-term self interest.

I've had enough experience selling products to know that the majority of customers are not shopping optimally. There's one class of customers that just wants the cheapest crap available, and damn the consequences. There's another class that is smart enough to ask for "the best," but it's how they define it, and they will pay an exorbitant price.

Relatively few customers are buying the right products for the right prices. They are smart enough that they could probably open their own business...if they weren't already involved in something else.

In short, the market is a competition that creates far more losers than winners. It does educate everyone along the way (did that crap not work out? Try something better next time.)

But the losers are still among us. Let's say you're smart enough to avoid buying Chinese wallboard, but you go to a friend's house who does, and you get sick. You made the right choices, and you still lose.

Cassettes didn't beat 8 track because it was better quality either. They were cheaper and smaller.

And while we're on the topic of media... I switched from VHS to DVD because the media lasted longer and fast forwarding and rewinding is faster. Why is it when I put a DVD in, I have to fuck with the remote for 30 seconds to get to the goddamned menu because of "Acceptable user operations"?

Who the fuck decided the media producers could decide when I can fast forward, rewind, pause or go to the next track?

The most ubiquitous DRM is in every household already and it's obnoxious. Bluray isn't any better either.

what i find really is your argument for a truly 'free market' is really reminiscent of a lot of arguments for communism that i've heard, in the sense that "it would work great, if only human beings thought and acted differently than they actually do."

Oh, I understand Libertarians now. It is not their beliefs are wrong. The people are wrong for not living their lives "correctly". If you could make the people in the country act "right" then the country would be Libertarian and perfect.

So, they are just like communists. The communist system didn't fail because their system didn't work. It was because the people did not act "correctly". If only they could have acted "right" and sacrificed their own self-interest for the interest of the whole, then communism would have succeeded.

The truth is, that you have wonderful ideals, but they have no place in reality. The reason why the US constitution is such a good document (not perfect, but pretty good) is because it does not assume that people will be perfect. It is designed for imperfect people, and will survive their imperfection. Your system is designed for perfect people, and when it meets an imperfect person it will completely fail.

I am not sure you have a correct understanding of Libertarians. Libertarians. . . believe in as little government as possible. . . [and that] an individual is responsible for him/her self and shouldn't count on government for anything.

I'm pretty sure he gets Libertarians completely. The problem is that people don't act responsibly for themselves much of the time, that people are in fact incapable of acting as perfectly-rational, well-informed economic actors in all markets, and that society crumbles without some form of check and balance on people placing their own interests above the expenses of others.

Much like communism, libertarianism relies on the notion that the world will be a utopia if everyone acts properly or that a large enough group of people acting according to the tenets of the philosophy will be able to mitigate or eliminate the negative effects of those actors who work against it. Both systems drastically underestimate the knack that unethical people have for pushing off the costs of their behavior on others in ways that are difficult to effectively police without a mix of strategies outside the province of "pure" systems.

There's also the minor issue that, when one does nothing but "vote with one's dollar," the company has no way to know why. Or that without some sort of overarching organization, people find out about things that piss them off at different times, and so the relation of action to reaction is spread over time to the point that it, again, becomes completely opaque.

We've tried laissez-faire capitalism - it's called the Gilded Age, and it was TERRIBLE for 90% of the population. Previously, we tried it in Edwardian/Victorian Britain. It was horrible and soul-crushingly destructive then, too. Sensing a theme? Pure free market economies are no better an idea than communism, if somewhat more efficient at producing products.

But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

This is a particularly bad argument when talking about cable TV - often, the consumer doesn't HAVE an alternative readily available; I can count the number of places I've been that offer multiple cable TV services on one hand, and I've lived places where satellite wasn't a real option because of geography or various out-of-my-control circumstances.

Corporations can act against our interests in a variety of ways without being immediately funded by those affected, particularly when a corporation has existed long enough and had enough pull to shape society or law in its favor. A good example is credit card companies - while there's no de jure requirement that I have one, if I don't build a credit history, I can't buy a house or car or get loans for school or...

Regardless, even if everything you said was correct, that's still a problem with Libertarianism, not with consumers. Because, well, any system that only works in the platonic world of perfect ideals is a stupid, worthless system, and not worth consideration in this, the real world.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

No, it requires a people infinitely resourceful, a people infinitely knowledgable about the actions of the corporations (and parent companies and subsidiaries) they interact with, even tangentially, and a people that can make their primary activity "making purchasing decisions" rather than work, or raising a family, or anything that is actually central to a real human's life. Also, these mythical people would still need to build a solid method for communicating the reasons behind their purchasing decisions, en masse, to the companies. Making purchasing decisions based solely in a political manner isn't some beautiful, virtuous thing, and doing so based on your own needs isn't immoral.

People not only won't buy things and services primarily according to abstract principles and disagreements, they shouldn't have to. There's no reason why, when deciding what car to buy, I should have to do thirty hours worth of research to see if the company making my car purchases child-slaves in East Examplia and grinds them up for lubricant - the laws of my country (and the world) should make unethical behavior illegal. That's what laws and regulations are for.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs.

Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty...

No... really. All we need for those to work as intended/described is a better class of humans.

I think there's a sort of problem with your idea in that it assumes the the market is being driven by a class of dedicated well-funded consumers. The idea is reinforced by the fact that people use the word "consumer" so often when talking about normal everyday people, but essentially there isn't much of a consumer class.

I know some people are scratching their heads right now and thinking that I'm spouting nonsense, so let me explain. You have a whole bunch of businesses out there trying to sell us all th

Sorry, but the days when consumers could change corporate behavior by changing their buying preferences is long gone.

You act like it's possible to punish Comcast by going to their competitors, but those shifts have long been absorbed by those corporations so that they no longer have an effect.

Today, your spending "habits" are locked-in, tied-down, under contract and so many times removed from your "choices" that it's just not an issue any more. Cable television, like all telecommunications are

False. Just because it records 420 lines of resolution does not make it "DVD Quality." VHS, S-VHS, and even Betamax and other tape formats did not handle things such as audio recording and chroma signal as well as true digital recordings do. But even from a simple resolution standpoint, S-VHS I believe recorded at 560x480, which doesn't even touch DVD resolution. Add to that the extra bandwidth for proper color resolution and digital audio, and there really isn't even a comparison.

- If I want to keep a recording it's as easy as popping-out the tape and putting it on the shelf.

The shelf life for the quality to remain similar to when it was recorded is no more than about 10-15 years. Yeah, they'll last longer than that, but the quality of the recording goes down as the tape ages. DVDs last much longer assuming they are reasonably cared for, and video stored in a digital format can easily be copied without a degrade in quality. Copies of magnetic cassettes? Not so much.

- (Main reason.) I have about $1000 worth of bought tapes and blanks, and it seems silly to just throw them away that much money.

So transfer them to a digital medium such as hard disks. Using the right equipment you won't lose a whole lot in quality (as if they are hi-fidelity as they are), and they'll actually last a lot longer.

- Also lots of my home movies are stored on VHS. I need some way to play them.

See my last point. Honestly, your VCR or VHS tapes will not outlive you. If you want to keep those memories, transferring to a digital medium (and making a few backups just in case the worst were to happen) would be smart. Heck, I'd make at least one copy that you store away in a safe deposit box or fireproof safe, so that you really make sure and keep them for a while. If those VHS tapes go up in smoke, adios amigo (assuming you have some home videos in there you wouldn't want to lose).

Betamax and VHS were consumer analog video recording formats that predated DVD recorders by about two decades. Back before Sony was in the MAFIAA, Universal Studios sued Sony to keep Betamax decks out of the United States, but Sony's win established the legality of home off-air video recording.

OK, I know most don't use VCR's anymore, but there are those using DVD recorders, and being unable to set the settop box to switch to the right channel would interfere with setting up recordings when one is away.

I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying?
Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast...
I think I need to do some research...

I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...

Although I hate to admit it - tivo. Despite the absolutely craptastic nature of their interface (it was great like 10 years ago, but hasn't kept up at all) at least on verizon fiostv they are great because verizon never sets the "do not copy" bit, so you can pull all your recordings off your tivo - hbo, cinemax, hdnet, anything but pay-per-view (which tivo doesn't support recording in the first place). I have a perl script that just regularly polls my tivo and downloads anything new to my linux box. Apparently tivo doesn't count these downloads as viewing of the programs either, so my tivo isn't even snitching on my viewing habits either. As far as they know I never, ever watch tv.

It may also work to use the firewire port on the verizon set-top box, if it has one - I haven't tried it since I don't have a set-top box, but typically the firewire stuff is limited by the exact same "do not copy" bit as the tivo uses to decide if you can copy too.

Not if you want to schedule recordings via their barely capable but better than nothing website.

Plus, I think you'll find that "opting out" doesn't stop your tivo from reporting your viewing habits, it just stops tivocorp from doing anything that would alert you to the fact that they have that information. As in, they won't send you tailored commercials but they still have all the information it would take to do so. That's almost universally the way these "opt out" things work.

Nothing happened to them when they imposed a 250 GB download per month cap totally violating the original contract agreements of millions. Want to bet it's in the fine print that they reserve the right to fuck you any time they want?

Want to bet it's in the fine print that they reserve the right to fuck you any time they want?

Hell, I doubt they even bother to hide it in lawyerspeak. There's probably a line in the fine print that flat-out says "Comcast reserves the right to bend you over and rape you with a sandpaper condom whensoever they please, for any duration."

Sorry, but I'm being sincere as hell about the DVR, and the milk. Some people are so cheap about things like this but waste just as much money on other stuff that doesn't actually improve their life. The guy who modded me Troll was W-R-O-N-G.

I completely disagree. Comcast DVRs are crap and I will not pay money for one. But, third party DVRs tend to be decent and worth the money. Too bad they too tend to use the "VCR" programming feature. This is the definition of anti-competitive. They are using their monopoly in one market (cable provider) to influence their competitiveness in another (DVRs).

I never said he had to pay Comcrap for one. I have happily paid DirecTV $5,6,7 extra for nearly 10 years. I hardly watch TV anymore, but I can watch what I want, when I want, without waiting for, or fussing with a tape. It's worth it to me

Digital cable boxes by law in the US (last time I checked) are required to have firewire ports to allow for unprotected content recording -- i.e. anything you can get over-the-air can be recorded via firewire stream. Incidentally, many basic cable channels are unprotected as well.

But, more importantly, you can change the channel through the firewire port.

And another reason why I havn't paid to view their DRM content. And none of the DRM features seems to be stopping the TV shows making it to the torrent sites with a few hours after broadcast anyway.Just as well, it doesn't look like our local channels are going to be picking up the second season of Dollhouse or the next season of True Blood, or the DR Who specials, etc.If it's not available here, it's not stealing is it? 8)

?Remote Control Command Pass-through Standard for Home Networking? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602), pass through control commands: tune function, mute function, and restore volume function. In addition these boxes shall support the power control commands (power on, power off, and status inquiry) defined in A/VC Digital Interface Command Set General Specification Version 4.0 (as referenced in ANSI/SCTE 26 2001 (formerly DVS 194): ? Home Digital Network Interface Specification with Copy Protection? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602)).

Before DVR, VCRs used to have IR emitters that would change the channel on the cable box automatically at the right time. You just need to find one of these.
Granted this might be a bit high-tech for some, but if someone was already programming their cable box to change the channel for the VCR, then they should be able to figure out the IR emitter.

you'd need one multi-stream CableCard plus the monthly subscription unless you buy lifetime service for the TiVo. It's pricy, but spread out over the life of the TiVo works out to be the best deal. I wish I had done it with my Series 1 TiVo that I got in 2000. It's still kicking, but I still have to pay monthly.The pricing for Comcast works out to be $2.00/month per CableCard, but I think the first one is free. TiVo's monthly fee is $12.95 for the first box and $6.95 for each additional box.

The DVR service is rental of their DVR equipment, not access to a service. They are renting you hardware that is a DVR. The DVR is also your cable tuner so you are only renting one device instead of 2. Digital cable boxes via comcast are $10/month, so in reality you are paying an additional $10/month for the more advanced box. Box breaks Comcast replaces it. You buy a DVR or build one something breaks and you may have to pay out more to replace/fix it than the $120/yr for the rental. When storage in C

In my area, they shut off all of the guide data early last year. In addition, they shut off the PBS-channel subcarrier that had the time-of-day, so I now have to manually reset the time on my recorder when the useless, murderous (but that's another subject) "Daylight Savings Time" changes occur. Of course, they've also shut off all of the clear QAM, so I have to have a set top box to record anything that isn't a broadcast channel.

But, since all of the alternatives are no better, if not worse, I have no re

Seen in a variety of places in the tech business, and businesses with a lot of underlying technology.

Here is how it works: Because technology is complex, most users are largely helpless, and incapable of realizing much of the theoretical promise of the technology available. A fairly small population of gearheads(and, if said gearheads happen to be motivated in setting up UIs, immediate friends and family of such) can realize the potential; but most cannot. At this point, you create a product that, by making things easy, gives Joe Sixpack 90% of what Jim Gearhead has always been able to do, available at the touch of a button. The last 10%, though, you take away from both Joe and Jim, in the form of DRM and/or fees. Because the population of gearheads is much smaller than the population at large, you get to look like you are "enabling new capabilities, for which you are charging a fair price/making a few reasonable concessions to content providers", even as you are, in fact, turning the screws a little tighter.

Historically, Apple has been perhaps the most talented player of this game, but there are certainly plenty of others. It's evil, certainly; but it works quite well.

It is the existence, and success, of this strategy that makes me think that user-friendliness may be a necessary survival trait for FOSS. If we can make Jim Gearhead's 100% solution easy to use, then the public at large will see the various crippled or fee-based(often both) almost-as-good-but-easier offerings as the steps down that they are, and protest loudly. If we can't, though, the companies that deliver them will, largely, receive acquiescence or even praise for doing so.

"Dear ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I come before you today with the intent to prove that Comcast, Inc. is the only company available in our area with the capability to provide this VCR-scheduling service, and moreover, is required by federal law to provide this service as a purchasable product to the public."

Are the DVRs in US so dumb that they don't allow the user to set the channel and recording time manually? It shouldn't be to difficult to check when the show is airing and setting the VCR to record that, though if the VCR doesn't have digital reciever, then one might have to set timer on both the VCR and the digibox. Atleast that is how it is done here.

Are the DVRs in US so dumb that they don't allow the user to set the channel and recording time manually? It shouldn't be to difficult to check when the show is airing and setting the VCR to record that, though if the VCR doesn't have digital reciever, then one might have to set timer on both the VCR and the digibox. Atleast that is how it is done here.

Why would a DVR owner be using a VCR in the first place? That's like using 8-track tapes to back up your AIFF files.

I still use a VCR, and I will until it starts eating tapes. (It's not that I'm some sort of zealot, it's just...well...it still works. Why fix what isn't broken?)

Course, it serves one, and only one, purpose: recording Jeopardy OTA from my DTV box. Which is, incidentally, the only reason I even need the DTV converter in the first place.

Funny story, my VCR is not year 2010 compliant, so I actually have to use a year with the same template as this year to get it working. (My VCR thinks that (as of this post) it's 11 Apr, 1999.) More useless trivia, it doesn't know about years preceeding 1990 either.

but you're not going to like it much more than "set up recording a few hours in advance"

You can set a timer on the VCR itself, usually about one to two weeks in advance. Then you need to make sure the tuner is set to the proper channel. Since that bit may also be disabled, you might only be able to record consecutive shows on the same channel where you set the channel for the next recording after the last time you use the television.

But if you're a techie, then I guess you gotta get DVR, TiVo, or Myth. O

Raise your hand if you bother watching TV any more. I stopped years ago. If there is anything I want to see, I just DL it when I want to.

Here's ABC's line up:

20/20

AFV - America's Funniest Home Videos

The Bachelor

The Bachelor Jason and Molly's Wedding

The Bachelorette

Better Off Ted

Brothers & Sisters

Castle

Cougar Town

Dancing with the Stars

The Deep End

Desperate Housewives

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

FlashForward

The Forgotten

Grey's Anatomy

Happy Town

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Lost

The Middle

Modern Family

Nightline

Primetime

Private Practice

Romantically Challenged

Scrubs

Shaq vs Shark Tank

SuperNanny

This Week With George Stephanopoulos

Ugly Betty

V

Wife Swap

Wipeout

Now, how is anyone's life worse off for being denied exposure to the above noted programs? I'm fine. I'm happy, I'm living a rich and colourful life. And I don't watch any of that crap - not on NBC, CBS, or ABC or even PBS. And I'm certainly not going to pay some cable company the privilege to watch TV commercials.

Do yourself a favour. Get rid of your set. If you MUST see something, watch it online. Otherwise - go find something else to do with your time than waste it in front of the idiot box.

I love that the discussion is all over the place in true/. fashion (because some of the most interesting points are sidebar discussions). However, if it isn't advertised and the summary is vauge how am I supposed to know how far to twist my knickers? I use a Tivo which uses an IR blaster to change the set-top box. No Comcast P/DVR. My assumption is that Tivo appears to the set-top box no differently than a third party remote control. So is the Anonymous submission saying I can't change my channels? I seriously don't even know enough to start a search other than "Comcast $ucks" which will return far to many hits...

Older cable boxes and and some of the new ATSC tuners have a feature where you can program the box to change channels at a specific time. It is kind of a pain because you have to program both the cable box and the VCR for each show you want to record, but it is the only way possible to use existing VCRs with these boxes.

This is especially important for the ATSC boxes because they are mandated by law* to ship with a feature that shuts them off after a certain amount of inactive time, so even if you switch th

I've got TiVo, and when the FCC mandated digital changeover was about to happen, Comcast made a big point of assuring everyone "if you're on Comcast and have an analog receiver, no worries, we're not changing anything!". Then a month or so ago I get an email from TiVo -- TiVo, not even Comcast! -- telling me Comcast is changing everything over to digital and that I'd have to get a freakin' cable box again. To add insult to injury, I've been reading reports all over the place of the DTA Comcast gives you not being 100% compatible or reliable with TiVo's IR blaster, so I had to get one of each cable box and see which one works: the DTA with no superfluous onscreen displays I don't need, or the full-blown cable box with all the useless bells and whistles. That and they keep raising the rates. I am NOT a happy Comcast customer, and if there were ANY other choices where I'm situated I'd go with them!

This isn't a malicious attempt to get you to upgrade to DVR service. It has to do with the fact that the digital cable box you have (Motorola DCT2000 series) has 2MB of flash memory.

The VCR recording feature requires an IR database (that stores the correct power/record codes for each VCR), code to operate the IR blaster, and of course UI and other features. All of this takes space. It may only be a few KB, but Comcast keeps adding features to the DCT2000 boxes and eventually something has to go. The VCR feature is one that isn't particularly popular (it's hard to configure and most people don't even have a VCR anymore), and it takes up more space than many other features, so it gets the axe.

Comcast's guide software (i-guide) is not particularly great, but it's a hell of a lot better than what used to run on the DCT2000. Those boxes are very old at this point, but the i-guide software has given them a reasonable level of functionality for people who don't want HD or a DVR.

If you don't like the change, you are free to do any of the following:- Return the Comcast box and use a video recording device (TiVo, Moxi, Media Center, etc.) that uses a CableCard. Comcast charges $1.50/mo for a CableCard.- Use a recording device or software (Media Center, MythTV, TiVO series 1/2) that supports your cable box with an IR blaster.- Switch to Comcast's DVR.

FYI, Comcast's DVR is $15.99/mo if it's the first box on the account in most areas ($20 if it's an additional box). Conventional boxes are free (first box) or $6 (additional boxes). Some of these rates vary by area, but they're increasingly standardized.

This just adds yet another reason to why I refuse to pay Comcast for TV... an extra 20-50 a month for the handful of channels I want to watch just isn't worth it. A Linux MythTV Box with an OTA antenna gets all of my broadcast shows, Hulu covers those rare instances that something malfunctions and I miss a show I actually care about, while Netflix (streaming to the Xbox360] gets me all of the cable-only shows that I want [albeit a year late]. Oh, and I also get a handful of random unencrypted channels via QAM from comcast [my landlord has a $10 a month super-basic plan] - subject to the whims of comcast's annual channel reshuffles.

Now, if I could only get both Hulu and Netflix to work well under MythTV, I'd truly be able to have all my entertainment on one device . . .

That article was published back in 2000, when not owning a TV was pretty unusual. My father was one of those people, and it was irritating. Now though? With iPlayer and similar services, along with DVD rentals through the post, owning a TV is a lot less common. It's still usual, but not owning a TV is no longer weird. I don't own one anymore, but I watch a lot more TV shows than I did back when I owned one.

The guide is the service you pay for. Comcast loans you the hardware so you'll subscribe to the guide. TiVo Sells you the hardware and requires you to subscribe to the guide. Your home-brewed DVR would rely on someone else providing you a free guide....

You can either scrape microsoft's free guide or, preferably, pay $20 a year for Schedules Direct in the US.
And if I recall, Comcast doesn't sell you the guide, they rent you the hardware that's capable of using their system. Even if you own your own hardware, they still make you pay to rent the cable card.